National

The last image we had of National on Italian soil was Matt Berninger closing out last November's show in Milan by walking through the sold-out crowd at Alcatraz. Before boarding the band's bus, parked outside the venue, Berninger had stepped off the stage, mic in hand, and bid farewell to the audience during a rendition of "Terrible Love", handing out hugs to fans along the way. Just minutes after the show ended, rumors were already circulating among the well-informed about a possible return of the band to Italy this summer, likely in Ferrara. Within a couple of months those rumors had turned into certainty, kicking off a feverish wait for everyone - longtime fans and newcomers alike - eager to once again witness a live show from the five friends from Cincinnati, now based in Brooklyn.

Now that the Ferrara show, too, has been entrusted to memory (and to the technological aids of videos rushed onto Youtube and the like), all that's left is to pin down its finest moments, certain in the knowledge that National are one of the best gifts the new wave of post-punk revival is offering our ears and our souls.

It's already dark when the band takes the stage, preceded by an excellent opening set from Beirut. The haunting "Runaway" is tasked with forging the first moment of intimacy with the crowd in Piazza Castello. Berninger, at center stage in an elegant black suit, captivates the audience with his singular way of singing, swaying dreamily as he clings to the microphone. The Devendorf brothers and the Dessner brothers are flawless, and the instrumental sections win over the crowd both in the more epic, layered tracks like "Bloodbuzz Ohio" and in the tenser, hypnotic ones like "Squalor Victoria".

The setlist favors the latest album, "High Violet", released in spring of last year, but also dips into the past, drawing from the songs of "Alligator" and "Boxer" - respectively, the album that pulled the band out of the niche circuit that had forced some of its members to hold down second jobs, and the one that launched them to worldwide success, helped in no small part by "Fake Empire", the track US President Barack Obama chose as the soundtrack for the campaign that carried him to the White House.

Despite the crepuscular moods that define their music, on stage National show no desire to wrap themselves in a cocoon of melancholy, nor any interest in playing at roles or characters. The existential torments and anxieties that run through the lines Berninger writes and sings belong to anyone willing to recognize them in themselves, and that's precisely why National's music brings together people of every age, without ever reducing itself to a manifesto for some particular scene or a hollow display of a liquid identity chasing the latest trend.

After a double dive into "Alligator", with "Abel" and "All The Wine", the night flies by in a dialogue between "High Violet" and "Boxer", missing only "Mistaken For Strangers" among their best-known songs. The first part of the show closes on the notes of "Fake Empire", enriched by the presence of Beirut's Zach Condon and Kelly Pratt among the musicians. The encore is a given, but the choice to open it with an old b-side, "Driver, Surprise Me", is not. The register shifts radically with the next song, a wildly unleashed "Mr November", which finds Berninger as an utterly uncontainable frontman who, along with his jacket, has shed every inhibition: he dives off the stage and performs part of the song from a location as unlikely as the reception desk of the hotel bordering the square.

It's a crescendo of empathy and shared feeling. Now up in the setlist is "Terrible Love": the blond singer from Ohio hops over the barriers and, chased by a security guard, stirs the crowd into a mass movement trying to follow his every move. It looks like the finale, a kind of open-air reprise of what happened in Milan. It isn't. Matt Berninger climbs back on stage, and behind him the band appears, still joined by the two Beirut members, lined up with acoustic guitars, a tambourine and a bit of brass. "Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks" is a goodnight song that needs no amplification. A surreal silence falls over Piazza Castello as Matt Berninger balances on the barriers and performs the song holding the hands of the people in the front rows, looking into their faces, seeming to want to share their thoughts in a search for intimacy far removed from the muscular performances so many rock stars are used to giving.

The National take their bows and leave, while the five thousand in Piazza Castello (another sold-out show, for the record) slowly stream toward the exit, still dazed by the emotions of the night.

That summer evening seven years ago, when The National played for a handful of people on the beach at the Hana-Bi in Marina di Ravenna, feels light years away now. Comparisons are inevitably being made, and the band themselves joke about it. "This sounds like the start of 'Pride,' but in the wrong key," Matt Berninger quipped in Ferrara, referring to the instrumental intro of "Sorrow." But it's a good thing it isn't.

Maybe one day The National really will become, like U2, a stadium band. Maybe it isn't true that reaching planetary-scale success makes you any less "pure." And yet part of us would rather they stayed a small secret still waiting to be discovered.

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